1). Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and method for detecting contraband.
2). Discussion of Related Art
In recent years, the detection of contraband, such as explosives, being transported in luggage and taken onto various means of transportation has become increasingly important. Advanced Explosive Detection Systems (EDSs) have been developed that can not only see the shapes of the articles being carried in the luggage but can also determine whether or not the articles contain explosive materials.
These detection systems include computed tomography (CT) machines. There are also explosive detection devices (EDDs) based on other technologies such as quadrapole resonance (QR). EDDs differ from EDSs in that the former cannot find the whole range of explosives as specified by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The EDDs and/or EDSs are typically manufactured by different companies and compute results in a way unrelated to each other.
To improve the performance of explosive detection systems, one approach is to combine multiple systems. In order to fuse the data from the different systems in a meaningful way, a tedious process of collecting joint data, designing a tailored data fusion algorithm, and subsequently tuning this algorithm is required. Additionally, in order for one to be able to accomplish this, he or she may have a very intimate knowledge of how each of the EDDs and EDSs work.